Leith's Thai Noodle Salad

So today was a bit of a big day.  First day back at work.   4am alarm call. New healthy eating regime (again).  Restarting the exercise thing (again!).  New boss (thankfully he's quite nice if you feed him cake - just not after midnight).  400-odd emails in my inbox after a two-week holiday (that excludes the fifty-odd I read and replied to whilst I was away, and I'm not even important!)  A mountain of washing that still needs to be conquered.

I had intended to make a low-fat turkey chilli for lunch, but then I realised I hadn't organised myself well enough for lunch at work (this was at 3.57am, just before the alarm call) so I decided to whack together a little prawn noodle salad, thus saving me from temptation at the salad bar in the canteen at lunchtime.

Healthy luncheon

Ordinarily, when I'm at my base site, I'll have a jacket potato and salad.  Trouble is, salad is about the only thing they do well and I usually end up with pasta or rice salad and coleslaw and all manner of other lovely salads, covered in dressings crammed on to my plate, meaning that I'd probably have done better to have something else.  But making my own instead, even if it meant cooking noodles before 5am, meant that I managed to stay relatively safe during day one.


Despite eating lots of rubbish on holiday, lugging around a 15kg toddler meant that I came home 4lbs lighter than when I went.  We walked several miles most days and this is a long way when you're only two.  When you're thirty-five and carrying a two-year-old it seems even further.  I now not only need to see a chiropractor about my hip pains (which keep interrupting my running) but also my bad back and neck from too many piggy backs.  I'm keen to keep up the weight loss momentum so healthy eating and low-impact exercise will be replacing cake and toddler carrying for the next few months.


The recipe today came from my Leiths Simple Cooking book.  I adapted it based on what I had in my fridge and it worked quite well for a lunch box meal.  The flavours were delicate, it was filling enough for me to miss out on my afternoon snack that the diet allows and it made me feel thoroughly virtuous.  Definitely a diet make-again as it's less than 300 cals.


Serves 1 (adapted from Leith's Simple Cookery)

• 1 nest medium egg noodles (I used Blue Dragon, 158 cals for the nest)
• 100g cooked and peeled King Prawns
• 3 radishes, finely sliced
• 3" chunk cucumber, cubed
• 2 spring onions, cut diagonally
• 1/2 red chilli, finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp nam pla (fish sauce)
• a couple of sprigs of coriander, chopped
• a few mint leaves, chopped
• pinch of soft brown sugar
• splash soy sauce
• 1 lime

1. Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions.  Once cooked, drain then run under the cold tap.
2. Cut the lime in two.  Squeeze the juice of one half of the lime into a small bowl and stir in the nam pla, soy sauce, sugar, chilli, coriander and mint.
3. Mix the vegetables, prawns and noodles together then pour over the dressing.
4. Squeeze the juice from the other half of the lime over the dish just before serving.

Thai Salmon Fishcakes

If I want a birthday or Christmas present from the husband, it has to be something that you can buy on the internet.  Even better if it comes from Amazon because he can get it on Super Saver Delivery and it doesn’t cost him anything.  This is because he doesn’t like having to talk to people.  It’s the exact reason why if he wants a takeaway when I’m away for the weekend, he’ll phone me and get me to phone the takeaway of choice.  I am so grateful that you can order from Dominos online so every once in a while he manages to feed himself without any input from me.

So last year, I asked for a copy of the Domestic Sluts handbook , which he actually went and bought from Waterstones(!) – probably because he only remembered the day before my birthday that he’d not bought anything and there’s no overnight delivery when your birthday is December 21st.  I came across their website/blog through Twitter when they tweeted about something or another.  It makes great reading, however, it’s become increasingly clear that there is still a wide (financial) chasm between being a Domestic Slut and a Slummy Mummy (which is what I am).  I do honestly mean to get round to reading the book one day, but with so many recipes to thumb through and my own blog to write, it’s still sat on the shelf having only been flicked through.  Like most good websites, I’m more likely to read the online offering than the hard copy version these days – a sad reflection of having a jam-packed life.

As it contains recipes, it is in amongst the cook books, but they’re all very ‘social’ recipes and as I’ve not done any socialising since long before Miss A arrived, it hasn’t warranted use.  I hope it will one day.  But in keeping up with their tweets, tonight’s recipe is courtesy of the Sluts website – Thai Fishcakes.

I’ve mentioned before that my inability to know how to make a chilli dipping sauce was one of the catalysts for starting this challenge.  Thai fishcakes are something I’ve wanted to make to force me to learn how to make the dipping sauce.  I ended up cheating and using shop-bought sauce because I didn’t have enough chillis to hand.

As the website says, the recipe is embarrassingly easy (and they don’t get you to make your own dipping sauce, so no guilt there from me).  I will say that before cooking, the mixture looks disturbingly like the innards of sausages that are made from ‘reclaimed meat’ with a few fancy herbs and spices mixed in.  But once cooked, they look far more pleasing.  Served with a sweet chilli sauce, a squeeze of lime and some healthy brown rice (that didn’t make it into the picture), it makes for a really pleasant – if sluttishly expensive – meal.

Will I make again?  Possibly although I preferred Lorraine Pascale’s salmon and sweet potato fishcakes.  But if I ever get round to making my own chilli dipping sauce then at least I know what to road test it with.

Thai Prawn Curry

Eight years ago today, I took the opportunity of 'Leap Day' to propose to my husband.  As much as I may whine about him, he took the proposal in good humour and didn't immediately reach for his laptop (they didn't have iPads and iPhones back in the dark days) and book himself a one way ticket to Dar es Salaam.

I asked him this morning if, after nine years together, eight years since we got engaged, seven years of marriage, six pets, five cars, four foreign holidays (mini breaks don't count), three different residences, two lost loved ones (my grandma, his mum) and the birth of one child if he would still marry me if I was to propose today.  "That would be bigamy" he said.  I'm sure there's a joke in there, somewhere, but humour isn't me strong point.  Apparently people laugh at me, not with me.  Which is the kind of thing a husband can say to his wife after so long together, without fear of divorce.  Or at least in this house, he manages to get away with that.

He gets away with quite a bit.  Like the way he very rarely makes me a cuppa.  He drinks about twenty cups of coffee a day, but if I want one, I have to ask (sometimes via text!).  I don't get offered.  Or his little habit of how he points out something needs doing so I'll feel guilted into doing it to prove a point, rather than me telling him to just do it himself.  I do, however, draw the line at certain things (re-tiling the roof, laying a patio, cleaning the dogs' bottom glands) and pay people to do things.  If he could find a way to get me to pay him for making me a cuppa, trust me he would.

But tonight, in the spirit of recognising the eight-year anniversary (or is it two because of that whole leap year thing??), he kindly offered me a share of his gravy from his customary chicken-and-Uncle-Bens-Express-Tomato-Rice to go with my dinner.  Then he looked a bit closer.  "That's prawns, right?  You don't really have gravy with prawns, do you?"  At last.  He's learning!  There's hope for his culinary journey yet.

The recipe is from Good Food (again).  Quick, easy and tasty Wednesday night fodder.  I've never had a Thai red curry before so I'm unable to comment on its authenticity.  However, I will say that I found the tomatoes to be overpowering in their acidity and ended up adding a pinch of sugar and a teaspoon of fish sauce to the recipe to try to balance that out.  It was still lacking even after this so I gave it a good squish of lime juice too and, whilst it was tasty, who knows if it was really meant to taste like that?

Not sure Bisto would enhance the flavour...

I suppose to really understand the subtle flavourings, I would need to try it in a proper Thai restaurant.  Pre-baby, we used to frequent a little restaurant called The Thai Barn in Bradford-upon-Avon which does the most amazing Thai food.  Even the husband likes it.  I'm hoping that one day the 'rents might get round to coming down for the weekend and babysitting so the husband and I can finally get a night out together.

In fact, Thai food was another one of the inspirations for this challenge and I'm ashamed that it's taken me this long to try even the simplest of recipes.  One of the things that planted the seed of the idea was watching a challenge on Masterchef where the contestents were asked to make some dish or another with a sweet chilli dipping sauce.  I suddenly realised that whilst I could make a good stab at the main dish, I wouldn't have a clue how to make the sauce - instead relying all the time on Blue Dragon's Sweet Chilli Sauce with Kaffir Lime (I could bathe in that stuff).

So I'll be updating the list of recipes I want to try with a few Thai-inspired ideas and pondering how I'm going to learn what an authentic red curry tastes like in the meantime.  Watch this space.

If you want to try today's recipe, you can find it here.  Do read the comments below the recipe though, I think they really make the difference to the dish.